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MEN_OF_TOMORROW

                                             September 30, 2008
                                             October   12, 2008

  "Men of Tomorrow" (2004) by Gerard Jones
  "Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book"


I like this book quite a bit: it
dives into a lot of details that
were skipped in the earlier,
sanitized histories of comics.
Notably, it discusses the
connections to underworld figures --
myself, I'd heard that magazine
distribution is (or was?) under the       (All of those pulp stories
thumb of organized crime, but I knew      about fighting gangsters may
very little of the details.               very well been products of
                                          organized crime themselves...)
   But the coverage of
   anything but the
   "Golden Age" is             Popular works of non-fiction
   sketchy; the primary        such as this often don't have
   focus is Superman and       real footnotes, in their
   the travails of Siegel      place, there's an appendix
   and Schuster.               with a series of chapter by
                               chapter notes.
      Myself, I was never
      much of a DC-head,       This makes it difficult to
      and I'd be a little      tell if any particular
      more interested in       passage in the text has any
      hearing the details      support provided in the end
      on Lee vs. Kirby.        notes.

            THE_SOURCE                     Gerard Jones is familiar with
                                           a lot of the published work in
                                           the field, and he's done a lot
                                           of original interviews --

                                           But there are many places he
                                           just tells the reader things
                                           that reasonably would be hard
                                           to know for sure -- and support
                                           for those points are often
                                           lacking.

                                              While Gerard Jones frequently
                                              adopts the stance of the
                                              skeptic, it's not at all
                                              clear that he always follows
                                              through on it.

                                              So, nice book: but if you care
                                              about the facts, watch your back
                                              on the details.

                                                  NITS_OF_TOMORROW

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